TITLE: Skin & Bones

Skin & Bones was originally developed for the exhibition My Canvas by Kvadrat Textiles. When I started experimenting with the material properties of one of their textiles called canvas, I was most fascinated by its sculptural qualities when put into drapery, and how it was covering up while at the same time revealing. Conceptually I became interested in the meaning of the word canvas* as a platform or background in relation to the work that it is staging.

The project Skin & Bones explores the activity of space-making as a continuous negotiation between bodies, social interactions and objects to material structures, and how they are mutually influencing and shaping each other. Laid on the ground, a flat, apparently two-dimensional square of canvas* – the ‘skin’ – waits to be activated by the ‘bones’ – an assortment of shaped tools employed by human bodies. Only together they can generate an endless variety of sculptural forms that at the same time are interior spaces – or spatial extensions of interacting bodies.

* Canvas (noun) 1. A heavy, coarse, closely woven textile of cotton, hemp or flax, mostly used for tents and sails. 2. A piece of such textile on which a painting, especially an oil painting, is executed. 3. The background against which events unfold, as in a historical narrative. 4. A tent or group of tents. A circus tent. 5. Sports. The floor of a ring in which boxing or wrestling takes place.